COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Months of debate over Ohio's two-year state budget bill ended Wednesday, mostly along party lines, with lawmakers sending Gov. John Kasich a $132.8 billion budget containing a freeze on Medicaid expansion over the objection of Democrats.

Republicans defended the freeze as a way to rein in costs on a program that has doubled from its initial estimates. Rep. Wesley Goodman, a Cardington Republican, said the freeze will free up state money for children and disabled Medicaid patients to receive services.

"We are not taking coverage away from anyone but rather we are maintaining medical assistance until individuals can transition to a better form of health insurance," Goodman said. "Our vision of a healthy, prosperous Ohio should include less families and citizens dependent on government, not more."

Democrats said the freeze threatens the state's fight against the soaring opioid addiction crisis and harms the working poor. Rep. Emilia Sykes, an Akron Democrat, said the expansion freeze will result in poorer health outcomes, more deaths and higher costs from increased emergency room visits by uninsured people.

"Any person in Ohio should not continue to suffer because of the poor planning and policy of this body and the one next door," Sykes said. "We owe it to them to do something better."

"People will die" without health insurance through Medicaid expansion, Sykes said several times on the floor.

Several Republicans took issue with Sykes' claim.

"While it is very politically strong to say people will die, the reality is that we will all die at some point," Rep. Mike Duffey, a Worthington Republican, said.

The two-year budget spends about $65.5 billion from the state's general revenue fund on prisons, health care, education, higher education and other public services. It targets nearly $180 million for opioid addiction treatment and prevention.

Rep. Niraj Antani, a Miamisburg Republican, said the bill's opioid funding is more important to his community, southwest of Dayton, than Medicaid expansion.

"People are dying right now -- eight a day in Ohio," Antani said. "A vote against this budget is a vote not to help the people who are dying."

It also contains earmarks and policy changes that range from allowing sales of alcoholic ice cream to $1 million for crisis pregnancy centers, which don't refer pregnant women for abortions.

Republicans chose instead to balanced the budget by making across-the-board agency cuts, eliminating programs with unspent funds and moving money from unclaimed funds, the Bureau of Workers' Compensation and other "rotary funds."